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Friday, 15 April 2016

DEBUNKED: 12 left-wing reasons for remaining in the EU

In recent
weeks I have encountered a variety of reasons, from fellow socialists, for
staying in the European Union and voting Remain in the 23 June referendum. Here
I outline the most common reasons and offer my own responses.

1. The EU has given us workers'
rights and social protections. Leaving the EU will mean we lose those.

It is
overwhelmingly a combination of trade unions and domestic governments (mainly
Labour) that have delivered those modest protections. It is through collective
working class struggle that we can defend (and extend) them.

Such
protections are in any case meagre, and they cannot be revoked by the Tories
without a struggle because EU laws are subsequently incorporated into domestic
UK law. The EU is overwhelmingly dedicated to the interests of finance and
business, not to support for the trade unions.

The Tories
can happily push through their draconian attacks in the Trade Union Bill within
the framework of the EU. If anything will stop them, it will be trade union
resistance. The TUC's preoccupation with campaigning to stay in the EU has
actually somewhat demobilised opposition to the Bill.

The European
Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights have nothing
at all to do with the EU. They are completely unaffected by this referendum.

3. This is a referendum on migration
and to vote Leave is effectively to oppose immigration into the UK.

No it isn't.
The referendum's outcome will make no direct difference to migration laws and
rights. The battles over migrants' rights are already happening and will
continue after 23 June, whatever the result, with quite different dividing
lines to those we are seeing on the EU referendum.

While many
right-wing Leave supporters are motivated partly by hostility to immigration,
left-wing opponents of the EU are implacable anti-racists who stand up for
freedom of movement and migrants' rights. And the mainstream pro-EU camp is
hardly friendly to migrants’ rights, with David Cameron negotiating away as
many such rights as possible to secure a deal with the European Commission
before launching the referendum.

Polling has
shown that immigration is a major issue influencing how people will vote, but
that it's way behind the economy in importance. This is certainly not a
referendum on immigration and the debate is not dominated by that issue, as
some on the left feared.

4. Brexit will lead to migrants being
deported in huge numbers from the UK.

No it won't.
No section of the British ruling class, or of the Tory government, wants that.
Cheap migrant labour is good news for many employers. For the Tories - for
every strand of the Tory Party, whether pro-EU or anti-EU - this economic
imperative is combined with the need for racist scapegoating.

Also, such
large-scale deportations would be highly contentious and enormously difficult
in practice. And they would raise the difficult question of why British
emigrants should be allowed to remain in the EU countries they have moved to. In
any case, the direction of political travel inside the EU is clearly to start
resurrecting border controls, so the EU provides no long-term guarantees of
freedom of movement.

5. Brexit will lead to a carnival of
racist reaction.

The same was
said of the referendum campaign. But it hasn't happened and it clearly isn't
going to happen. This referendum is taking place in the context of important
political upheavals that are largely beneficial to the left, following the rise
of Jeremy Corbyn to Labour's leadership.

News
headlines in recent weeks have concerned George Osborne's disastrous budget,
Iain Duncan Smith's resignation, the crisis in the steel industry and the toxic
fallout from the Panama Papers. The Tories' divisions have - pleasingly -
deepened.

There is no
need for such miserablism and fatalism on the left, especially given that the
most immediate result of a Leave victory in June will likely be the prime
minister's resignation (not to mention a defeat for everyone from Barack Obama
to the European Central Bank, from the IMF to the bulk of the City of London).

6. The EU is at least some sort of
shelter against a Tory government.

No it isn't.
And no it won't be. This is the same EU that smashed the Greek left-wing
government's attempts to defy austerity.

The Tories
are not some uniquely awful right-wing government. There are many right-wing
governments in the EU, the 'centre-left' governments are little better, and the
EU itself is deeply conservative and has neoliberal commitments embedded deeply
in it.

Also, why
should we cling to an utterly undemocratic edifice? If a Corbyn-led Labour
Party should be elected in 2020 - or earlier, given the Tories' crisis - the EU
will be a severe barrier to attempts to deliver positive reforms. We can’t be
trapped by the fatalistic short-termism of assuming we face a vicious
right-wing government.

7. We may avoid TTIP, but a Tory
government led by Eurosceptics would simply negotiate an even worse deal with
the US.

Let them try
it! Such efforts would be subject to the British parliamentary process - not
merely the remote and obscure world of Brussels politics - and therefore also
to mass popular opposition. Such big decisions about trade deals - about powerful
corporations grabbing, and profiting from, our public assets and services -
should be subject to democracy. This is a fundamental principle for the left.

We should
also be clear that TTIP is not going to be defeated inside the EU's structures.
The European parliament has very weak powers on this, as on everything else. It
is a highly secretive matter for the unelected European Commission (whose trade
commissioner notoriously declared that she doesn't take her mandate from the
people).

8. If Cameron and Osborne are forced
out, they will simply be replaced by even worse Tories.

The Tories
are split and in crisis. It's getting, if anything, worse for them. This
mounting crisis is for a number of reasons, Europe merely one among them.
Broadly speaking, this crisis is a boost for the left, the labour movement and
the working class.

A defeat for
Cameron in the referendum will make things even worse for the Tories - and will
scupper any remaining chance (already slim) of Osborne replacing him. Whoever
does take over will do so in deeply unfavourable conditions, presiding over a
divided party. That will shape their prospects. Bring it on!

9. The EU may be awful, but it can be
reformed.

No it can't.
It is not democratic and there are no mechanisms for reforming it. It is deeply
bureaucratic and has many commitments to neoliberal mantras enshrined in it,
via a series of treaties and rulings.

It would, in
any case, require genuinely left-wing governments coming to office across the
EU - pretty much simultaneously - to make such reform an even slightly viable
proposition. There is no indication of this being remotely likely to happen.

10. The EU may be flawed, but it
still functions as a forum for much-needed international co-operation on issues
from climate change to tackling tax evasion.

No it
doesn't. This claim featured in Jeremy Corbyn's speech this week, but there's
scant evidence to support it. The EU has had extraordinarily little impact on
these particular fields. It has not even slightly restrained capitalism from
destroying our climate - any more than it's restrained the super-rich from
robbing their national treasuries (and thus the people) by putting their money
where it can't be taxed.

It has,
however, been a useful forum for strengthening transnational corporations and
powerful corporate interests. Brussels is a hive of well-funded corporate
lobbying. It's really no surprise that the Confederation of British Industry is
so overwhelmingly behind the Remain campaign - or that the IMF this week
declared strongly for the UK staying in the EU.

11. The EU may not be working well,
but we need it for any prospective international co-operation.

Should we
also argue for the maintenance of the IMF, WTO, World Bank and Nato? No serious
socialist wants to sustain those institutions. The left wants to dismantle them
because they are institutions of the capitalist and ruling class elites.

The same
applies to the EU, which was founded and developed to advance business
interests, has pushed for neoliberal policies of cuts, deregulation and
privatisation for over 20 years and has overseen the barbarism of 'Fortress
Europe'.

Real
internationalism comes from below. It advances through joint struggles of working
class and oppressed people. It doesn't rely - even slightly - on remote and
elite institutions. The European Central Bank is one of the EU's institutional
bodies. Anyone who thinks it can be a friend of the working class has not been
paying attention.

12. It is better to be a 'European' -
whatever the EU's limits - than a 'Little Englander'.

It's better
to be an internationalist - with a truly global perspective and truly global
solidarity - than either of them. Our vision should not be limited by the (ever
more repressive) borders of Europe, with black and brown bodies from outside
Europe drowning – in their thousands – in the sea.

We can make common cause
with American fast food workers and Egyptian revolutionaries, with Palestinian
activists and Brazilian pro-democracy demonstrators, regardless of whether
their countries are in the EU.

There is
nothing inherently progressive about Europeanism. Proud 'Europeanism' is
entirely compatible with the most vile forms of racism - and indeed it often
is, as much of the European far right articulates the alleged superiority of 'European
civilisation' over the predominantly Muslim, supposedly backward and dangerous,
Other. International solidarity is in no way aided by the pieties of being
proud Europeans.

This is not
a vote on whether we want to be ‘part of Europe’. It is a vote on an
institution: the European Union. It’s an institution that has done far more
harm than good. We should get out of it, both for the sake of the great
majority of people here and to weaken the EU as a whole.

2 comments:

The UK and migrants, even worse than the rest of teh EU. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34131911 and http://socialistresistance.org/8127/eu-referendum-for-a-critical-in-vote-against-racism and http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/02/zac-goldsmiths-support-eu-exit-another-boost-sadiq-khan